


Beholding

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2018 [28]
Category: Split (2016)
Genre: Blood, Gen, Gore, Murder, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-08 20:52:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16436561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Casey puts an end to it. The Beast thoroughly approves.





	Beholding

**Author's Note:**

> This’ll undoubtedly get jossed when Glass comes out in January, buuuuut since the trailer is the whole reason I’m writing this, whatever.

She can’t take it anymore.  
  
 _Why am I going back to this?_ She thinks, as she gets out of the car and goes with John.  
  
 _Why am I enduring this?_ She thinks, as John wraps his arms around her as though his embrace still held comfort rather than pain.  
  
Mere hours ago she had survived a man’s deranged alter-egos, who’d been intent on sacrificing her to their newest addition; she wants to think that she survived of her own grit and smarts, but at the end of the day her continued survival came at the mercy of that very monster, the _beast_ who’d originally intended to make her his prey.  
  
“ _You are different from the rest,_ ” He’d said.  
  
“ _Your heart is pure! **Rejoice!**_ ” He’d cried as though in a fit of religious ecstasy.  
  
“ _The broken are the more evolved. **Rejoice.**_ ”  
  
And he had looked at her with something she was not accustomed to seeing from anyone else:  
  
Respect.  
  
Tears had streamed down her cheeks, disbelieving, as he’d turned and walked away.  
  
The Beast had called her evolved.  
  
The Beast had suggested that in her broken, scarred state, she was strong.  
  
Strong enough to do what she has to in order to stay alive.  
  
So why do her hands shake now on the rifle? Why is she trembling worse than she had in that cage below the zoo, with the Beast bearing down on her, immune to her bullets? Her current quarry is quite vulnerable to bullets. He made that clear years ago.  
  
And still, she shakes.  
  
Still, she hesitates.  
  
The world is silent and unmoving in the study. She feels dazed recalling a thousand memories in this room, the mundane day-to-day interactions with it; she will, from this moment on, remember it as the room she got the rifle from before she did what she had to do.  
  
Assuming, of course, she _can_ do it.  
  
(She has to.  
  
She can’t take it anymore.  
  
She’s survived one hell only to be returned to another.  
  
This can’t continue.)  
  
After an eternity of staring into the darkness of the study, she forces herself to move. She steps silently through the doorway into the living room- from here, she must pass through the kitchen to get to the front hall, which leads upstairs to the bedroom.  
  
And to him.  
  
The walk takes an eternity. She is convinced that by some horrible coincidence he will come downstairs for a drink, or that he will somehow just _know_ what she’s planning and magically appear before her in the dark. She’s seen stranger and (almost) scarier things over the last week.  
  
She walks up the stairs slowly, minding the steps she knows will creak beneath her weight. It doesn’t matter if they do- if he hears her, he will probably assume she’s getting food or water downstairs- but she can take no chances when the stakes are so high. When she reaches the landing, she turns and looks straight down the hall; his door is straight ahead, miles away and agonizingly close all at once.  
  
Now or never.  
  
She takes a step- and then stops.  
  
She feels something in the air change; she senses a presence. It’s such a jarring, new feeling that it takes her time to remember that she has, in fact, felt it before: In that hideout beneath the zoo, when the Beast broke through and rose to life before her, warping Kevin Wendell Crumb’s body into something far stronger than his host. Before, she might have called this feeling the creeping prickle of prey under a predator’s gaze; she doesn’t know what to call it now.  
  
 _He’s_ here.  
  
Nearby.  
  
Maybe outside the house; maybe inside it, for all she knows. He moves so quickly, so silently, it’s hard to say.  
  
Maybe he came to find her, tracked her down by her scent.  
  
Maybe he’s telepathic, and knows what she means to do.  
  
Maybe he wants to watch.  
  
She doesn’t pretend to know the full extent of his powers. She’s almost certain _he_ doesn’t even know the full extent of what he’s capable of, new as he is.  
  
Should she stop? Should she put the rifle back and pretend this never happened? _His_ presence was not in the plan, and she is shaken from her already treacherous course now. His is an erratic factor at best and an active danger to her at worst; she cannot assume that the mercy he showed her in the basement is a permanent thing. But if she stays her hand, that might signify weakness to him, and he may reevaluate her ‘purity’.  
  
If she stops now, she will never get the nerve again.  
  
And she cannot continue living like this.  
  
So after a long moment, she makes her way down the hall.  
  
As the door swings open, she moves as though in a dream; she has fantasized about doing this before, contemplated with varying levels of seriousness, but the actual act of stepping into her uncle’s bedroom, of standing at the foot of the bed with her hunting rifle pointed at his skull- there’s something heady and overwhelming about the actual reality of the moment, of feeling the weight of the rifle in her hands as his chest rises and falls steadily in sleep.  
  
There is no more hesitation now: She raises the rifle, points it right about where his head is- a messy but effective kill-shot. She will take no chances.  
  
She pauses, ensuring that she has the shot.  
  
And then she fires.  
  
There’s a splatter of blood on the pillow and blanket and nightstand and headboard and wall. Her uncle writhes, twitches for a few seconds- and then falls still.  
  
Dead.  
  
She stands in the silence, in the new world beyond the hell she’s existed in from the day her father died. Can it really be _that_ easy? Can it be that the answer to her misery was at her fingertips for so many years?  
  
It was so simple; it’s over now, and she is free.  
  
For now.  
  
She turns away from the wreckage of the body, towards the door-  
  
-and eyes stare back at her in the darkness of the hallway.  
  
She’d nearly forgotten he was there, lurking beyond her sight. She clutches the rifle tighter, a reflex despite knowing it is useless against this particular foe. Her heart pounds as he steps into the bedroom.  
  
The Beast may not kill her and eat her as he did Marcia and Claire- but she doesn’t know what other desires he might have, doesn’t know if he might do other things to her: Things that have been done to her a thousand times before, things that she had been hoping to bring to an end by blowing her uncle’s brains out. She holds as still as she would if there were an actual wild animal crouching before her, breath growing strained as he approaches.  
  
He looks no different than he had a few nights ago: Still bare-chested, still somehow taller and broader than Kevin Wendell Crumb and his other personalities, still somehow more bestial and intimidating than a normal man. He is only a little taller than the average man, but he still seems to tower over her far more obviously than any others.  
  
For a moment they stare at one another, silent.  
  
The Beast reaches out, touches her hair as it hangs over the front of her shoulders- gentle, gentle, gentle. Regardless, she does not move.  
  
“We were right,” He says, voice a low-pitched purr. “You are different from the rest.” There is respect in his eyes again, and she dares to relax.  
  
Slowly- slowly enough to bring alarm into her heart, her eyes- he pushes the rifle away. She lets him, lets the rifle clatter to the floor. He wraps his arms around her, and the embrace is softer and kinder than she might have expected. She leans against him uncertainly.  
  
“Strength,” he whispers, lips tickling the top of her head. “is beauty. The broken are the strong. The broken are beautiful.”  
  
This is… Nice. It has been a very long time since she’s been held like this, without threat or pain. And in this moment, without even her abuser left alive, when she is utterly alone and without people in this world, it is good to feel another beside her. The Beast- for all his savagery- understands her.  
   
Eventually he pulls away, cups her face with his hands. There is more than respect in his eyes now; there is pride, too, in the brutality she’s just displayed. “You are pure,” He whispers. “And now you are free.”  
  
The Beast, with calculation that sends a chill down her spine, reaches down, picks up the rifle, and wipes it clean of her fingerprints. Then he replaces them with his own, pressing his fingers to where hers were when she fired the fatal shot. Her heart thuds rapidly in her chest as she realizes what he’s doing.  
  
“I-”  
  
He flings the rifle to the side, and it hits the wall. She flinches- her father had taught her to respect guns young- and looks at him questioningly. He puts a finger to his lips, and then steps past her towards the bed. She turns to watch, but he puts a hand on her shoulder and turns her away so that her back is to the bed.  
  
She stays put, and listens to the wet, disgusting sounds that come from behind without so much as peeking.  
  
Finally, the noises stop. She waits, and starts when she feels the Beast’s warm breath on the back of her neck.  
  
“Goodbye, Beauty.”  
  
A beat- and then the window crashes.  
  
When she turns to look, he is gone- blood is smeared on the carpet and bed and wall and window-frame, more than there was before. She tries not to focus on the body, not sure her constitution will hold. She doesn’t feel him anymore; only a cold breeze from the window he so hastily exited from.  
  
The Beast has- deliberately, intentionally- given her a gift. A great gift that will allow her to be freer than she thought she would be after tonight. A kindness, from one of the broken to another.  
  
She sucks in a deep, hard breath.  
  
And then she runs downstairs and calls the cops.  
   
-End

**Author's Note:**

> Can't get over the subtle Beauty and the Beast parallels in this movie tbh


End file.
